Beasts Of Bourbon, if you we around when they were you were usually guaranteed a good night out. Not sure when I shot this but it was on transparency film pushed two stops, so probably 1600 ISO. Still amazes me how good they look, digital would kill it for technical performance but a look and feel of film has a certain quality all its own.
Formula-
I exposed most of this by estimation and I was pretty much spot on, good to see that after twenty or so years of shooting I can still nail an exposure without resorting to a meter.
The older Hasselblad lenses are not as contrasty as the CF ones so you get beautiful creamy tonality with excellent edge sharpness- not bad for a lens almost as old as I am.
The 500CM was introduced in 1957 and remained in production until 1970, my one is from the mid “60s and is very worn. I shot exclusively on Ilford Hp5 developed in Kodak D76 or ID11 (pretty much the same developers). For a camera this old it didn’t miss a beat, no light meter so I guestimated the exposures and mostly was pretty close. The Reciprocal Rule works like this-
The ISO equals the shutter speed at f16 on a bright sunny day. So for the 500cm with 400 ISO film it works out as: f16 at 1/500 sec.
Scanned on the Nikon LS9000 scanner using SilverFast, slow but the quality is amazing.
I worked around that, opening up in the shadows by a couple of stops as needed, usually works fine and is a hell of a lot quicker than stuffing around with light meters.
Still have to do an edit
Click here to have a look.
Some of the first of the Manly Holga Pics
This thing is amazing, the design and build of it is just awe inspiring. Remember to watch the local fat policemen try to chase the rather fit and agile umbrella sellers- two fat guys squeezed into a Fiat 500.
I shot a lot of Xpan in Rome, fantastic place but hot in summer. The contrast between the white ruins and the cobbeled streets is pretty harsh.
